What makes him run

Daniel Kerr, possibly the best player inthe AFL, comes from a tough family and football background. Martin Blake reports on what makeshim tick.

DANIEL Kerr's father, was a premiership player at East Fremantle and Port Adelaide, two of the toughest and most successful football clubs in the land in the 1980s.

Roger Kerr was born in the cesspool of Kolkata, the son of an English metallurgist who went to India and met a local girl, married her and brought her to Perth when Roger was seven.

A few people in AFL circles used to think that Daniel was Aboriginal; more recently there have been stories printed that he is of Sri Lankan heritage. In fact he has family links to the British Raj and his grandmother was Indian.

Roger Kerr was a quick midfielder for the Sharks and a member of their 1985 WAFL premiership team but by most accounts not the packbuster that his son has become for West Coast.

In fact, it is on Daniel's mother's side of the family tree that the best explanation is found for the manic and combustible way he plays the game. Kerr's mother, Roxanne, is a Regan, which means nothing in Melbourne, but everything in Perth.

It tells you why Daniel Kerr plays like the Energiser man and continues to play astonishing football even in the wake of a pre-season in which he spent a couple of days in court facing assault charges and was the subject of an AFL drug investigation.

After two games of 2007 Kerr is favourite for the Brownlow Medal, and just this week, Wayne Carey said that if he had a choice of Chris Judd or Kerr, he might take the latter.

The Regans are one of the Catholic clans who ran the old Fremantle, often with iron fists, before that part of the world became gentrified.

Daniel Kerr's great-uncle, Con Regan, is a legend of East Fremantle Football Club and still a vice-patron of the Dockers, the AFL club that East Fremantle spawned.

Con Regan was a senior policeman; his brother, Michael, also spent time on the force, worked on the docks and carved a reputation as a bruising footballer.

Another brother, Harry, is the father of Roxanne Kerr and played for the Sharks, too."

The thing about them is they're hard," said Ken Judge, Daniel Kerr's first coach at AFL level and an East Fremantle identity himself. "They're bluers.

They don't walk away from anything. If you have a crack at them, they have a crack back."

They're dogged people.

They're unique, and it's a big school. You don't go around town bagging them because it might be someone who's related to them."

This is where Daniel Kerr comes from, and Judge is not alone in seeing the Regan in him. "I played footy with Roger.

What's happened is that he (Daniel) has got his running ability from his father and his hardness from his mother. Most people here would say Daniel plays like the Regans."

Glen Jakovich, the dual West Coast premiership player who played his early football for South Fremantle, was thinking precisely the same way when he saw the 77-kilogram Kerr rope up 100 kilograms of Barry Hall when Sydney's colossus ran at him in their round-one clash."

That didn't surprise me," Jakovich said. "Last year he tackled Fraser Gehrig and he's probably bigger than Barry Hall and maybe stronger. Fraser fended him off the first time, but Kerr-y puts his head down as if to say, 'No way you're doing that again'."

That's the singlemindedness.

It's the true Regan that comes out of him.

I remember watching it and thinking: 'You are a gem'."

Daniel Kerr has been an AFL star pretty much from the time he made his debut as an 18-year-old with 22 disposals against Geelong at Kardinia Park in 2001, with Jakovich, who sometimes calls him 'Daniel-son', as his roommate. "I thought: 'Who's the schoolboy in my room'?" Jakovich said.

Kerr was runner-up in the Brownlow Medal behind teammate Ben Cousins in 2005, polled 22 votes last year and had 16 bounces in the grand final, on the biggest stage, as the Eagles secured the premiership.

What is amazing is that in the opening stanzas of 2007, he has taken his game to another level with beston- ground efforts against Sydney and Collingwood, immediately following a preseason in which he has twice been in court on assault charges and he has been at the centre of an AFL drugs investigation.

It takes a certain type of individual to play sport to an elite level while their private life is in turmoil. According to Dr Noel Blundell, one of Australia's foremost sports psychologists, they are a rarity."

Some athletes get so distressed over what's occurring off the field, they carry that stress on the field, they become vulnerable, they don't concentrate effectively, they can't read the play, they make impulsive decisions, they're a step late," said Blundell, who has worked with sportsmen and women in all fields, notably in tennis and golf."

They feel flat and lacking in energy and you think their condition is an issue when in fact it's not. That's one type of response. The other is - and I've seen it first-hand - they've got a million distractions in other parts of their lives, they step through the gates at the weekend and that's their sanctuary.

Daniel Kerr, pictured at Eagles training last month, has blitzed the first two games of the season despite being involved in several off-field dramas.

"The rest of their life just melts away," Blundell said. "It's where they feel at home, and the worries of the world on their shoulders tend to melt. For several hours they're non-existent. For several hours, they relish the freedom it gives them mentally, and they play very well."

Blundell says that the second category - and Kerr plainly fits - also happen to be the elite players of sport, the ones who want the ball in their hand at the crucial moment. Such as the dying moments against Sydney when Kerr made up two metres on Jarrad McVeigh to make the match-saving tackle.

"He's playing like a desperate man," Jakovich said. "He's let a few people down, more so his family and himself. I can only compliment him for the way he's gone about it. Daniel's got a lot of maturing to do. With the events of the last six months, he's grown as a person more than as a footballer.

"He's obviously realised his behaviour off field hasn't been acceptable, and I think he knows that. It's knife's edge, pretty much. I don't think the club would tolerate any more misdemeanours."

In Perth, the tide has turned somewhat. "In two weeks, he's arguably the best player in the competition," Jakovich said. "Two or three weeks ago they wanted to hang him at the town hall, mate."

"Focused" is the way people describe Kerr, and it is a common theme.

Before a match, he will be almost totally silent, intent on the task ahead. "It's like an out for him," Jakovich said.

"He gets out there and does his stuff. He's quiet outside of footy. He's not in the media or promoting products. He doesn't want the spotlight and he doesn't want to be in the leadership group. He just goes about his business and keeps it simple."

One of his first junior coaches, the former North Melbourne player and Sandover medallist Peter Spencer, recalls Kerr being a star at Aquinas College in Perth, where he played in two premierships.

"He was very good with his feet," Spencer said. "That quickness of feet helped him with that. He danced. He always had good balance while being tackled.

"When he came to training, he focused. You didn't have to rev him up. He wasn't a rah-rah person. He wasn't noisy. He let his actions take control. Everything was done on the field."

Spencer also points out that Kerr came with exceptional athletic ability to go with his natural toughness. He was unbeaten in his last three years at inter-school level in the 800 and 1500 metres, was an accomplished basketballer, and went all-Australian at the under-18 national football championships.

It is a marvellous irony (today of all days, since the WA teams meet in another derby), that Kerr should have been a Fremantle player, for he was from that area, and his only colts game was with East Fremantle.

But West Coast took him at No. 18 in the 2000 draft with a selection that came to the club from St Kilda in a trade for Gehrig, and before the Dockers, with no first-round pick, had a chance to snaffle him.

Lack of size kept him from going higher in the draft, but Judge remembers the spindly boy as having no qualms in 2001, despite his 69 kilograms. "I remember (Dean) Kemp pulled out one day at Carlton, and we put him in the centre on Brett Ratten, and he couldn't care less. He just played like it meant nothing."

How good is Kerr? Carey's comments this week comparing him with Judd - "he's every bit as good if not in front of him right now" - are the ultimate compliment, for Judd has almost universally won approval as the land's No. 1 player in the past two years. But Judge does not believe they are hyperbolic.

"I'll tell you what, currently he's as good as Judd, I reckon. That's a big call. I think Judd's a wonderful player. But he (Kerr) just makes so many things happen. He's the full package.

"You don't see Judd dragging blokes down like he does, you don't see Judd getting off the bottom of the packs like he does. You get the run with Kerr, and the explosive talents, but you're getting the other side as well. It's line-ball."

Spencer thinks similarly: "He's equally as damaging with his ability to free players up in tight situations. Judd streaming down the field as a goalkicker, they're different, and their size sets them apart.

"But I don't think you could say one's more damaging than the other. They're pretty much on a par."

The best photography from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. more photos

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